Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Frost and Baroness Barran

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 207. Ever the optimist, I hope the Government will take it seriously and bring it back on Report with a “g” in front of it.

The amendment has two parts: the first extends the right of a local authority to withhold consent to home education for a child or their family who is in receipt of services under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989; the second extends this to children who have ever been classified as a child in need of protection under Section 47 of the Act. To be clear, both parts would give local authorities just the discretion to withhold consent on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, I am not proposing a blanket refusal, but, as drafted, the Government’s position is not altogether clear, although I suspect that the noble Baroness will tell me that my drafting is not altogether clear either.

All children who are in special schools would now be within scope, as we debated in the earlier group, of the local authority’s right to withhold consent, but not those under Section 17 where there are safeguarding or neglect concerns. That just feels the wrong way round in terms of priorities. I appreciate that my drafting could focus more narrowly on those children defined under Section 17 of the Act to focus on safeguarding and neglect, but it is curious not to focus on those children. Unlike my noble friends, I do not think it is easy to get either Section 47 or Section 17 status and I worry that the bar is too high with just the current Section 47.

On the inclusion of children who have ever been subject to a Section 47 child protection plan, we talked earlier about the tragic case of Sara Sharif. The Minister in the other place said that

“we cannot say for sure what might have made a difference, but we will learn lessons from the future … local child safeguarding practice review”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 30/1/25; col. 297.]

I think I am right in saying that Sara Sharif had been put on the child protection register at birth. She came off the register and, as we know, was removed from school and died, tragically. Without the changes in my amendment, the one thing we can be sure of is that the proposed law as drafted would not have made any difference to her.

I know that both Ministers on the Front Bench want to get this right; I am just trying to state the reality that if a child has ever been considered to be vulnerable enough to be subject not to a Section 47 investigation but to a child protection plan at any point in their short life then that is a massive red flag that needs to be removed before consenting for them to be educated at home. I respect the probing Amendments 205 and 206 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, but I support the Government’s approach to giving local authorities the power to withhold consent in cases involving child protection.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I want to underline the points made by my noble friend Lord Lucas on Amendments 205 and 206, which I have also put my name to. Section 47 is obviously a very difficult area for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, just underlined, and it obviously needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, a debate needs to be had about where we are drawing the borderline, whether there are areas where Section 47 need not be an automatic barrier to home education, whether there needs to be a further process, or whether the process is different in some cases compared with to others. At the moment, it is a very broad and straightforward yes or no test. As we know, as has been said and no doubt will be said again, there is evidence that this Section 47 process can be hijacked in certain circumstances and in certain kinds of relationships just to disrupt, cause trouble or make life more difficult, so we have to be sensitive to that.

I certainly think that, again, it is something perhaps better explored in these famous August discussions than necessarily in the detail now, but it is important not to take a completely black and white view on this. I will not labour the point, but I also think it underlines the need to have a proper appeal process and tribunal to take the sensitivities of the particular cases properly into account.